Always in the ministry through the years that the Lord has given to me, I have been encouraged to see scripture in detail, as you well know, sometimes bearing down with amazing relentlessness on one verse or one phrase. And I love to do that. I am greatly challenged and thrilled to dig deeply into the smallest piece of divine revelation. But at the same time, I realize that nothing is more exhilarating, nothing is more encouraging, nothing is more compelling than to understand the big picture. In understanding the Bible, it’s fine to understand the details, if you understand how the details fit into the big picture. And so when you can sort of talk about sweeping themes of scripture, it’s very, very helpful to create context in which we can place the details. And that’s essentially what we’re doing as we’ve come to Genesis Chapter 2, and are looking at the issue of the seventh day. We are looking into a detail. But the deeper we go into this detail, the more it throws us into a wider, broader view. You’ll see that as it unfolds tonight in our message and in subsequent messages in the weeks ahead.
We have finished our series on the origin, origin of the universe, as indicated in Genesis Chapter 1. By the way, that series has had an amazing, amazing response, and I think it will continue to have that when it is aired on Grace To You. It will literally fill up an entire month of broadcasting, I think, after the first of the year. But when we finish Chapter 1 and we get through the creation, also adding the elements in Chapter 2, we come to the beginning of Chapter 2, and it says:
“Thus, the heavens and earth were completed and all their hosts. And by the seventh day, or on the seventh day, God had completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
Thus, we are introduced to the day after creation, the seventh day. And that introduces us to this whole issue of the seventh day. We know it is a major issue. We understand that it has connections to the Jewish Sabbath. We understand that there are groups today, such as Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists — would you believe — and other groups that still adhere to a Saturday observance of worship. And there are many people who have transitioned the seventh day to the first day, and they are what we call Sunday Sabbatarians, who want Sunday to be treated with all the same devotion and the same prescription as the Old Testament seventh day Sabbath. That introduces us then to the necessity of having to get a grip on the seventh day, and its significance.
Now, last time we addressed the issue of the seventh day in Genesis 2:1-3. It is mentioned there three times. And the creation account makes this reference to the seventh day three times, and identifies it as a day in which God has ceased all His creative work. Now, we’ve covered the meaning of that in our prior message. If you weren’t here, I really encourage you to get the tape on this. So — it is so very foundational. But to remind you of the essential teaching that we gave, we need only to direct you to the fact that this day, God blessed and sanctified, according to Verse 3. Now that is to say God declared it holy. Now the incomparable character then of this seventh day is indicated by the fact that the word “holy” is used to designate it, and it’s the first time the word “holy” is used in scripture; first usage of the Hebrew word meaning holy or sanctified. It means to set apart, to exalt, to elevate above the usual level. And the seventh day becomes elevated. It becomes set apart. It becomes lifted up. It becomes exalted, for three reasons, indicated by three verbs. First of all, because the heaven and earth, Verse 1, were “completed.” That is to say creation was finished. Secondly, in Verse 2, because God, having completed His work “rested,” meaning not to work; also, including the positive idea of delight and satisfaction. It was a special day because creation was finished and because God was fully satisfied, as we saw back in the end of Chapter 1, the very end of the chapter in Verse 31, he saw what he had created and: “It was very good.” We also noted that God rested Because there was nothing else to do. There was no further work until the Fall of man, when God had to go to work again to preserve and uphold his creation, now fallen and tending toward death. And he also had to begin the work of redemption.
So we concluded then that the seventh day of rest in Genesis has no relation to man’s rest. Doesn’t say anything about man resting. Doesn’t have any connection to man’s worship. It isn’t commanded of Adam to observe it. Mankind is not told to observe it. There is no command for man to rest every seventh day in Genesis. There is no Sabbath rule given here. There isn’t any Sabbath rule given anywhere in Genesis, not even in the Abrahamic Covenant, which was God’s unique covenant of blessing with the nation Israel. But it is a special day set apart because God completed His creation, because He rested. And then Verse 3, because he “blessed” the seventh day. And in what sense did he bless it? Well, he blessed it by identifying It as a memorial. Every seventh day, we showed you last time, that goes by stands as a testimony as it were, a memorial to the great fact that God created the universe in six days.
There is no reason — and I pointed this out last time — there is no reason for men to count time in seven-day periods. There is no reason for that. There is no — it doesn’t make mathematical sense to divide 365 days or even 360 days in the Jewish calendar into sevens. It doesn’t work. There is no compelling reason to do that. Tens would seem to fit much better. The only reason that we possibly could have arrived at a universal, worldwide designation of time in seven days is because that is testimony to a six-day creation, after which God rested and established that seventh day as a constant, ongoing, end-of-every-week memorial to his six-day creation. So that every time Saturday comes along, it gives us opportunity to be reminded of the fact that God created the universe in six days, and it was finished. And so when Saturday rolls by, we remember God, the creator. And when Sunday comes, we remember God, the Savior, because that is the day that Jesus rose from the dead, having accomplished our redemption. Through the years in western Christian society we have recognized that man works on a five-day week. And he takes those two days — I think we have lost obviously the intent — but we would think that maybe the intent for some was that we might spend Saturday remembering God as creator and enjoying that creation, and spend Sunday worshipping God for the gift of Christ, who died and rose again for us. And so with that we closed our thoughts on Genesis.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
